Sacred activism: the story of Tamera

‘We all were indigenous
once. We have been waiting for you. Welcome back.’

Participants in the Defend the Sacred gathering on Odeceixe beach
in Portugal, August 12 2017.
Credit: Copyright Tamera Institute. All rights reserved.

There are people who think that Odeceixe is the
most beautiful beach in the world. Nature has created a pearl in southern
Portugal, a sandbank between the green meanders of the Seixe River and the blue
of the Atlantic Ocean. Each day in summer, the sandbank is flooded with
tourists, and on this particular day—August 12 2017—they expect nothing more
spectactular than sunscreen, surfboards and sandcastles. They don´t yet know
it, but today they will be part of a prayer. A widely visible prayer, formed
with their bodies to protect the coastline from oil drilling by national and international corporations

From early morning, a part of the beach is being
separated, and people are working hard in the sun, forming a giant image in the
sand. In the afternoon buses arrive, full with hundreds of indigenous elders
from different cultures, activists, trade unionists, shamans from Latin
America, Palestinians and Israelis arm in arm, musicians, and lots of young
people.

“We know the world
stood with us, so we come to stand with you,” a powerful mature woman says into
a microphone. It is LaDonna Brave
Bull Allard, one of the initiators of the Standing
Rock struggles. A young man adds, “Water is life. Water is sacred. Life is
sacred. We must protect the very
things that our lives depend on. For our NO to succeed, we have to know what we
say YES to.”

This
gathering—called Defend
the Sacred—is being hosted at Tamera,
a community dedicated to the task of finding alternatives that are both
visionary and concrete, strongly rooted in its own place but working with
activists from the wider region and across the global South. Tamera had invited
activists to reflect on their experience from Standing Rock, Sumud Freedom Camp in Palestine, the peace village San José de Apartadó in Colombia, and many others from around the
world who actively protect what is sacred to them, whether water, nature, human
rights or freedom. The idea of the gathering was to envision a global community
of sacred activism and discuss how this movement could continue and succeed.

Situated a little
more than an hour from Odeceixe, Tamera is an international peace research community of nearly 200 people from
many different countries and age groups. The community was founded in 1978 in
Germany and moved to Portugal in 1995. Its founders—the sociologist and
psychoanalyst Dieter
Duhm and the theologist and
peace ambassador Sabine Lichtenfels—intended to create a holistic model for a
peaceful society.

“The issues of our
time are so interwoven and so closely linked to each other,” wrote
Duhm, “that they cannot be
solved individually. It will only be possible to carry out the tasks for the
future on the basis of a well functioning community.” In his view, humanity has
separated itself from the universal powers of life. In order to survive we need
to reconnect, a process Duhm calls “human revolution.”

“Trust is the most
original and most efficient of all healing forces,” he continues, “The very
first task of a community is therefore to create trust among the participants.”
That’s why Tamera invests such large amounts of time, skills and care in
building trust and truth among their members.

On a daily basis they
meet to reveal what they think and feel, to envision their common aims, to
provide mutual support and to create transparency. This daily “Forum” is a
crucial part of the community, without which it would not have survived for so
many years. In all its activities, Tamera follows a plan
of what it calls “global
healing biotopes”—model communities with autonomy over water, food
and energy but strong regional and global linkages, and connected to the divine
forces of life in everything.

Arriving in Tamera
in summer after driving through a landscape threatened by desertification and
woodfires is like arriving at an oasis. Bodies of water fill the valleys,
surrounded by terraces with gardens and fruit orchards. Water has been a core
topic in Tamera from the beginning. Under the guidance of mountain farmer and
ecological visionary Sepp
Holzer, Tamera created a
natural ‘Water Retention Landscape’—a series of interwoven ponds, lakes and
orchards designed to slow down rainwater runoff and give it time to filter deep
down so the soil is fertile throughout the year. Other work focuses on
decentralized energy solutions, holistic healing, alternative education,
permaculture, biologic building and communication and cooperation with animals
and plants.

However the most
crucial element of Tamera´s work is love, the core work of peace. “There will
be no peace in the world as long as there is war between the genders” says
co-founder Lichtenfels, “Our intention is to create a field for love free from fear.
This also includes sexual love.” Every choice that somebody makes in
Tamera—be it a monogamous, polyamorous or celibate lifestyle—is supported by
the rest of the community so long as it is based on mutual respect and inner
truth.

Sexuality and love
are regarded as sacred forces which we cannot own. “Also, we cannot possess
our partner", says
Vera Kleinhammes, a mother of
two children. “Isn´t it strange how many couples find it normal to lie to each
other on what they really feel or to whom they are attracted? But without
truth, love cannot grow.” In Tamera, partnership and free love don´t exclude
each other, they need each other. “However, I would not dare to try this
outside of community.”

This approach found
resonance among the participants at the gathering. Time and again, activists
have faced internal conflicts and collapse in their communities and protest
actions around the topics of jealousy, the suppression of women, and other
gender topics. Social transparency on love and women’s empowerment are part of
the remedy for these conflicts.

As Vassamalli Kurtaz shared—a representative from the indigenous Todas tribe in India —“Before our communities were
colonized, married women could choose one or two other sexual lovers if they
wished. It was accepted by tradition also by their husbands. Now with having so
many men without the chance to have sex we have tensions arising in the
community. Colonization and Christianity harmed our lifestyle and the nature
that we live from. We need to return to our traditions.”

Pat McCabe from the Diné (Navajo) Nation added this: “According to our traditions, we look for balance and
healing between fire and water, light and dark, the feminine and the masculine.
I am impressed that this community works so deeply on this balance too. It is a
profound experience to find a place in Europe which gives such a strong
resonance to positions that have been crucial in indigenous cultures. I leave
this place with the feeling that the wounds of colonizations can heal.”

At the gathering,
the activists developed a sense of global community, envisioning how
the movement for defending the sacred that began at Standing Rock could
continue, supported by the emergence of decentralized alternatives to
capitalism. As Tiokasin Ghosthorse said, a representative of the Cheyenne
River Nation, “We all were
indigenous once. We have been waiting for you. Welcome back.”

Meanwhile at
the beach, the renowned activist and artist John Quigley had prepared an image that we will form with
our bodies in the sand, filmed from the air by drones so that we can send it
out to the world as a strong declaration of our will. The image consists of a
huge dolphin and the words: “Nao ao furo (‘no to the oil drill’)—Defend
the Sacred.”

We line up to enter
the image, passing by a place of sacred water kept by Lichtenfels and a place
of sacred fire kept by LaDonna Brave Bull. Everyone is led to a place in one of
the letters of the declaration or—in my case—as part of the dolphin´s snout.

Soon it becomes
clear: the image is too big to fill with the 400 or so people that have come
from Tamera and the rest of the region, even with all the other activists. We
need at least double. What to do? Do we have to give up like so many times
before?

“Be attractive”
shouts Quigley, “attract people to join us.” And we do. We shout and sing and
call the tourists on the beach to help us fill the image. They watch, but
hesitate. After all it is their holiday. But then they come. Parents being
pulled in by their kids. Couples and groups of friends, surfers and sunbathers
leaving behind their daily business and joining in, happy and proud to be part
of something bigger, each one being cheered on by the activists.

And then we make it!
In the end we are nearly 1,000 people. The last to join is Takota
Iron Eyes, aged 13, a Sioux youth
leader from Standing Rock who forms the eye of the dolphin together with other
teenagers.

When she starts
singing, the crowd becomes silent. Something resonates very deeply in me. It
feels like a transformation point in my internal belief system. We really made
it. And if we can be successful here then surely we can do anything—stop the
oil drilling, change the track of history, and create peace on the earth.

Leila Dregger is the author
of Tamera - a model for the Future. An
agricultural engineer and longtime journalist and writer of books, she is a
screenwriter for theater and film, and was a coworker of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), press officer of the House
of Democracy in Berlin, the ZEGG
in Belzig and Tamera in Portugal, where she mainly lives today.

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